Monday June 18th, 2007: Issue #813
It was Fathers’ Day yesterday and I enjoyed being made a fuss of! My girls clubbed together to buy me some great gifts and Delia cooked a very special lunch for us all.
Fathers’ Day is often branded as a cynical construct of the greetings card industry, but its history is much better hearted than that.
There had been odd days set aside to remember fathers who had died in war or accidents, the earliest recorded being in 1839. But nobody had thought to honor living fathers and certainly not in any organized way.
Our concept of Fathers’ Days really began on Mother’s Day in 1909 or 1910 (reports vary). Mrs Sonara Dodd was in church listening to a sermon extolling the virtues of mothers and realized that in her family, where her mother had died in childbirth, it was her father, William Jackson Smart to whom she owed gratitude for bringing her and her siblings up.
She proposed a celebration day for fathers to her town’s ministers and suggested that June 5th (her father’s birthday) would be a good day to hold it.
The ministers of her town, Spokane, Washington, embraced the idea wholeheartedly but said they needed more time to write appropriate sermons, so the date was changed to June 19th.
The unique celebration was held in Spokane and newspapers across the United States carried stories about it and a movement to make the date an official one soon gathered momentum.
The all-male US Congress thought that if they backed it they might be criticized for being too self-congratulatory and so although President Woodrow Wilson and his family observed the day from 1916 and in 1924 President Calvin Coolidge suggested that should observe Fathers’ Day “if they wished”, official recognition remained unforthcoming.
It was not until 1966 that President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation making June 3rd ‘officially’ Fathers’ Day. A few years later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon changed the date to the third Sunday in June - as it remains today.
In the UK, Fathers’ Day appears to have been imported from the US in the mid-1970s and although now very much a permanent date in our calendar, it doesn’t appear to have ever had any official government backing. Typical!
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There’s something I didn’t tell you - because I didn’t know myself.
Robert Puddy’s new Internet marketers’ forum, the one I told you about last week that costs just $10 to join, is very soon going to increase its admission price to $47.
Apparently the $10 special is only for the first 1000 people who sign up, and as I write this, there are 860 people in there already.
Momentum is starting to build very nicely and already there are some very useful and interesting threads.
If you haven’t joined yet, this could be the best $10 you invest for a long time!
http://www.urlnex.us/ForumKnowHow/
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I was chatting with my friend Kim Standerline the other day and asked her if she would be able to make a special offer for Kickstart readers on her excellent membership site software, Easy Member Pro. It never hurts to ask! 
The regular price for a one-site license is $137, but I’m delighted to be able to tell you that Kim has really come up trumps and has slashed it to just $70 for us.
I’m using Kim’s software to build my own membership site right now, and I can tell you that it is very easy to use.
Membership sites are a great business model and they are extremely hot at the moment. How cool is it to have dozens or hundreds of people paying you a monthly subscription - month in, month out! No wonder so many people are starting them.
Software like Kim’s Easy Member Pro puts a highly profitable membership site business within reach of just about anyone - and at this price it is an absolute steal.
This is only a short term offer, so don’t delay. If you think too hard about it you might miss out.
http://www.kickstartdaily.com/emp-special/
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Every once in a while I get an abusive email from someone who no longer wants to receive Kickstart. (Not the same person, you understand!)
The pattern is always the same. They accuse me of that nasty ’s’ word and threaten to report me to everyone they can think of if I don’t remove them from my list immediately.
Usually their tone, and often their language, leaves a lot to be desired.
Of course, I always remove them straight away. No reputable newsletter publisher wants to send emails to people who don’t wish to receive them.
But I do often wonder what is so difficult about clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email I send.
I really do hate to see any subscriber leave, but do understand that Kickstart isn’t for everyone - and I certainly don’t get upset!
So if you do want to stop receiving Kickstart, please scroll right to the end of any issue and click where it says ‘Use this link to unsubscribe’. There’ll be no hard feelings and it’ll be a lot better for your blood pressure than writing angry and offensive emails!
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There is a new much-hyped ebook coming out this week. I’ve been reading a pre-release review copy.
I don’t want to name names and spell things out too explicitly, but you’ll see the promotions as every ‘guru’ under the sun is bound to promote it.
My advice?
Don’t bother with it. Only very advanced marketers will be able to make use of the techniques it teaches and most of them simply wouldn’t want to.
Save your money.
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An Inspirational Thought
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Inspiration is like a torch or flashlight. It just sits there, doing nothing, until something presses the right button. Then everything lights up.
The good news is that all the buttons are right there inside your own mind.
You don’t need to see a beautiful sunset to feel inspired by it. Just close your eyes and see the reds and oranges and yellows. See the majesty of nature’s paint box spread out in glorious technicolor right behind your eyes.
You don’t need to buy a CD to be inspired by Mozart. Just sit back and imagine a string quartet is right there in front of you playing your favorite piece.
You don’t need to grow roses to be inspired by the heady perfume of a deep red damask rose. Just remember the last time you smelled one and re-experience the joy that its scent triggered in your emotions.
You have control of all your own inspiration buttons. You just have to remember to press them once in a while.
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Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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François de la Rochefoucauld said:
‘If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.’
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Today’s Power Thought
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Think for a moment about the people you will interact with this week.
They can be put into two groups: those who are filled with so much lifeforce that it leaks out everywhere they go, and those who never seem to have enough lifeforce of their own and have to unconsciously suck it from everyone they meet.
I don’t know what lifeforce is - it is a kind of energy, surely, but it has nothing to do with age, intelligence, gender, race, or any of the things we normally classify people by. It is a force apart. A vibrancy that can uplift or depress simply by its presence or absence.
I do know that this lifeforce is constantly moving. It flows from the people with an abundant supply to those who are either temporarily or permanently lacking.
You can clearly see who has it and who hasn’t.
The people who have an abundant supply tend to be the charismatic leaders. The people who others like to follow. They are the ones who sparkle. They have ideas that people listen to. They are self-starters. They have an entrepreneurial spirit. They are never frightened of a challenge.
You can have as much of this lifeforce as you want. It won’t cost you anything at all - not even the effort of acquiring it.
How? By making the decision to send your own lifeforce energy into everyone you meet. The more of it that you can mentally transmit to others, the more will flow right back into you, until you will be so full of it that it will spill over into the world around you.
Do I sound crazy to you?
Maybe I am, but give me the benefit of the doubt. Try it out for a day or two and feel the difference.
May the lifeforce be with you.
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Fascinating Facts
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Have you ever said, ‘I’ll take a rain-check on that’?
A ‘rain-check’ was a ticket issued at baseball games when rain stopped play. It entitled the bearer to see the team’s next game without paying.